Ensure

Ensure

June 2012 Ensure product lineup
Type	Dietary supplement, Meal replacement
Invented	1973; 44 years ago (1973)

Ensure is the brand name of nutritional supplements and meal replacements manufactured by Abbott Laboratories.

In 1903, Harry C. Moores and Stanley M. Ross launch the "Moores & Ross Milk Company" which specialized in bottling milk for home delivery for the first few years. By 1964, however, the company merged with Abbott Laboratories. A drink called Ensure was first marketed by Ross Laboratories in 1973.

In the 1990s Ensure and other nutritional drink products like Mead Johnson's Sustacal and Nestlé's Boost and Resource brands were fiercely competing to capture market share among healthy adults. In 1996 Ensure had sales of about $300 million and accounted for 80% of protein supplement sales; Abbott spent $45.4 million to advertise Ensure during the first nine months of 1996, around 70% more than it spent during the same period of 1995. In 1995 the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that ads for Ensure were "the most misleading food ad" of that year. In 1997 Abbott settled charges from the Federal Trade Commission that it was falsely marketing Ensure as having a similar amount of vitamins as multivitamin supplements, as being recommended by doctors more than any other nutritional supplement, and as being recommended by doctors as a way to stay healthy and active for people who were otherwise healthy.

Ensure has been used in the force feeding of hunger-striking prisoners at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps.

When Abbott split off its pharmaceuticals division, Abbvie, in 2013, the Ensure product line remained with Abbott with the other nutritional products.

As of 2016, variants of Ensure included:

As of 2016, Ensure Complete had been discontinued.